The postal network is heading for an even more debilitating shutdown on Monday after 5,500 staff in the Post Office said that they were to follow 115,000 of their former co-workers at the Royal Mail out on strike. In what looks set to turn into a day of co-ordinated national industrial action, 32,000 members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) are also planning to strike on Monday. The FBU is also striking on Friday. Tens of thousands of lecturers and further education non-academic staff are planning walkouts tomorrow, The Times writes.

Barclays faces a demand to pay as much as $700m to a US hedge fund after losing a crucial appeal in a five-year legal battle that revives questions over the bank’s strategy during the financial crisis. In a judgement on Thursday, the New York supreme court of appeals overturned an earlier legal ruling in Barclays’ favour and found the bank liable for breach of contract over a vast credit derivatives transaction with Connecticut-based Black Diamond Capital, the Financial Times reports.

The head of one of Britain’s biggest energy companies said the UK’s energy sector should be investigated by the competition authorities, acknowledging that the big six were “no longer trusted” by the British public. Tony Cocker, Chief Executive of Eon UK, was one of eight company bosses grilled during Tuesday’s marathon four-hour energy select committee hearing, called to address a wave of price rises that have fuelled a political row about the cost of living, the Financial Times reports.

Thomson Reuters is to cut an additional 3,000 jobs in response to lower demand from banks for financial information. About 5% of the news and data provider’s workforce of 60,000 will go as part of the latest cost-saving measure. The brunt of the losses will be borne by the financial and risk division, which provides data and analysis to banks and other financial firms, according to The Times.

Tata Steel is cutting almost 500 jobs in Scunthorpe, Cumbria and Teeside, blaming a slump in demand across the European construction industry and the cost of green levies. Announcing the cuts, the company and its biggest union called on the government to do more to support the steel sector by helping with exports and encouraging use of UK steel in building projects, The Guardian writes.